[fjtorres]

May I play devil's advocate here?
Before we start all the tearful handwringing over the "old days", neither big chains, nor the supermarkets, or evil Amazon forces anybody to do anything.
If a retailer fails it is because *consumers* choose to shop elsewhere.
That simple.

If some retailer or another gets better pricing on (in this case) books from their supplier (in this case, publishers) they can either pocket the difference or pass the savings to consumers. The first, benefits the retailer short-term; the latter, long-term.

Now, if some retailer doesn't get as good a deal as another, whose fault is it?
The second retailer or the supplier?
If you must rail against book discounting because you pine for the "good old days" of full list-price retailing, please direct the ire at the *enablers*, the pubishers. Neither the chains nor the supermarkets nor the online retailers could undercut a well-run retailer if it weren't for the publishers volume-discount practices.

After twenty-plus years of fostering high-volume outlets at the expense of smaller volume outlets, *now* the publishers plead innocent to the world they created?

Cry me a river; there are no innocents here.

At the top, producers went for cheap volume-pushing; strip-mining the channel, in effect, without regard to what the long-term effect would be.
At the bottom, consumers bought by price, not loyalty or nostalgia. Cold deal-hunting ruled and still rules. People (usually) work hard for their money and want the biggest return for it at the time of their purchase. The future can take care of itself.
In the middle, some retailers saw the changes and tried to adapt, some successful--some not; others blithely kept on doing what they always did, oblivious to the world around them, some successful--some not.

Now, whose fault is it?
Times change; some adapt, some don't.
Some live, some die.
The world moves on.